A. 匠　B. 折　C. 丘　D. 近

E. 芹　F. 所　G. 祈　H. 兵

I’ll spare you some kind of bad pun about having an axe to grind.

Theoman is more perceptive than I am, because he thinks the axe radical actually looks like an axe.  And his memory’s not bad either: he remembered the “grass” radical in E and assumed (correctly) that this must be parsley, because parsley tastes pretty much the same as grass.  He may even have a sneaky sense of humor, but we can’t be sure–did he know that the left side of B was the “hand” radical when he said that it looked touchy-feely?  We’ll assume for his sake it was a joke, because his actual guess was incorrect.  There were two things on this quiz that you do with your hands: fold and pray.  B is the former.  And while H is not prayer, as he guessed, we do award him a bonus point for correctly using both “it’s” and “its” in the same almost-sentence.

But Theoman seems to have had an unfair advantage this week in that he was able to use his eyes.  A Fan, unable to see, tried to hear the kanji instead.  Did it work?  Well, he found Joe “Hill,” at least, at C.  I guess the labor movement lives on after all.  Can we give him partial credit for using a Simon and Garfunkel song (technically, just the lyrics, not the title) for A, which, as it turns out, means “artisan”?  Is “The Gambler” truly as ubiquitous and useless as parsley, E?  Did he go to Google for G not just because of the letter connection but because otherwise he didn’t have a “prayer” of coming up with a song containing that word?  Maybe, like his dog, A Fan’s sense of hearing is better than his sight after all.

Shirley felt powerless (haha) to deal with this quiz, but she forged valiantly forward regardless.  She was close on B, seeing “folding” and assuming that these were hands clasped in prayer.  And speaking of close, no one got that close to “close,” D.  She tried to bring one of her favorite techniques, innovative spelling, into play at F, but it didn’t quite pay off.  Unfortunately, standard spellings would have served her better.  The “P” here stands not for “Pholding” but for “Place.”  And last came H, which, between the three contestants, was identified as a prayer at a place on a hill.  Sounds appropriate for the lonely soldier, don’t you think?

Since it’s mid-January, I was going to test you folks on the ice radical, but weather.com tells me it’s currently 38 degrees, so it would all melt.  I guess we have to do water instead.  Here we have soup, pollution, sweat, an archaic way to say “you” (sort of like English “thou”), decide, run alongside, spend the night, and law.

A. 決　B. 法　C. 汚　D. 沿

E. 汁　F. 泊　G. 汗　H. 汝